Pacifica

As California seceded in 1930 to create the Nation of Hollywood, the people of Oregon and Washington began to consider their own options. As the other western states began the slide into what would become the Disputed Western Territories, the consideration became more urgent. With the collaspe of Canada, the choice became clear. Washington, Oregon and British Columbia formed the nation of Pacifica.

Pacifica is widely regarded as one of the more peaceful nations in North America, focusing on technological innovation and a thriving trans-Pacific trade. However, the presence of the Boeing Aviation works, along with a large Hughes Aviation test facility, means that underestimating the military capacity of Pacifica has only ended badly for her enemies.

The former states of Oregon and Washington have all they need to continue as an independent nation: farming, timber, light and heavy industry, aircraft manufacturing, shipyards, higher learning, mineral reserves, ocean access, and self-sufficiency born of isolation. Either state could survive alone, together they could prosper. They lack but one crucial ingredient, however: population.

Pacifica has a total population of about five million people, most of it along the Pacific Corridor stretching from Puget Sound to center-western Oregon. This gives Pacifica plenty of room to grow: with chaos to the east and the largely-empty mountains to the south. Pacifica has an ongoing border dispute with the Nation of Hollywood, to the south; Hollywood wants to crowd into Oregon, and tried to assume control of the border towns in the mid-1930s. Pacifica answered by moving into northern California with combat zeppelins, largely with the aid of the local northern Californians, who don't particularly like the Hollywood government.

Firmly entrenched in the Sierra Nevadas, Pacifica’s government (led by Governor Chester Haskell, a former attorney who saw combat in the Great War) is now concentrating heavily on the growing conflicts in the far north, where White Russians from the Alaskan Ranges are causing trouble in the coastal regions of the former British Columbia. This is bad enough, but just as worrisome is the looming threat of Imperial Japanese influences on the Eastern Pacific, particularly in Hawaii and the eastern Aleutian Islands. Poor relations with Hawaii threaten to cut off the southerly trade lanes, used to avoid Alaskan pirates, which forces Pacifica trade inland across Canada, south along the coast, or to thread dangerous routes between Alaska and Hawaii and along the Japanese fringes to the South Pacific.

Pacifica is also concerned with pirates operating out of Idaho, the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, and along the coast.